unexpected quits everywhere?

I have suddenly found myself with a huge problem- Whenever I get a dialog box popup in any application, then hit 'OK', the given app 'unexpectedly quits'. I have not tried EVERY app I own, but can consistently reproduce the problem in Address Book, iPhoto, Illustrator, mail, and iCal.

The only thing I've done on my computer recently that is out of the ordinary for me is create a new disk image on my hard drive. I have no clue how that could be the culprit though. I have since deleted the disk image and verified and repaired permissions.

Does anyone have any advice? I am currently without my Panther disks to do a reinstall, which I would really like to avoid unless it is a last resort anyway.

I have suddenly found myself with a huge problem- Whenever I get a dialog box popup in any application, then hit 'OK', the given app 'unexpectedly quits'. I have not tried EVERY app I own, but can consistently reproduce the problem in Address Book, iPhoto, Illustrator, mail, and iCal.

The only thing I've done on my computer recently that is out of the ordinary for me is create a new disk image on my hard drive. I have no clue how that could be the culprit though. I have since deleted the disk image and verified and repaired permissions.

Does anyone have any advice? I am currently without my Panther disks to do a reinstall, which I would really like to avoid unless it is a last resort anyway.

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Not sure...but it sounds like you may have a file structure or directory problem. You said you repaired permissions but you don't have the Panther install disk. You may want to get a copy of "Drive 10" or "Disk Warrior" to repair it. I'm pretty sure you can't do it from the Disk Utility. that's in the Utilities Folder.

I know what you mean about re-intalls

BTW: What version of "Panther" are you running, (just for the hell-of-it)?

Thanks- well my stupidity knows no bounds. I thought you could repair permissions right through disk utility (it acts like it is doing it) but apparently you need to do it from a different disk? Either way I found another thread where the person had the exact same problem. They solved it by removing ALL the preferences from their user's library. I am going to give that a shot. I am running 10.3.4 but I would have to bring my tower to the office to do a new install of the system, then ALL the updates, etc. which I really don't want to do.

Thanks- well my stupidity knows no bounds. I thought you could repair permissions right through disk utility (it acts like it is doing it) but apparently you need to do it from a different disk? Either way I found another thread where the person had the exact same problem. They solved it by removing ALL the preferences from their user's library. I am going to give that a shot. I am running 10.3.4 but I would have to bring my tower to the office to do a new install of the system, then ALL the updates, etc. which I really don't want to do.

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Don't be so hard on yourself .

Repairing permissions is usually the first step to take. The question remains, however, is did it actually complete the task or did it fail? (Black screen or just stop?) If it fails, you would want to try using the Disk Utility from the Installer Disk. You did say, however that your Panther disks were not available . If I'm not mistaken, it allows you to do a Disk Repair as opposed to only repairing permissions. If that fails (Disk Repair), after 2-3 attempts, you will need a 3rd party disk repair utility. Much much easier than doing a re-install and all the updates, including transferring any files back to your HD. Disk Warrior works well for me as does Drive 10. Cocktail is a good utility also. I run the "Pilot" feature on it and it does it all.
Saved my butt a few times since I tend to "experiment" a lot just to see if I can CRASH my mac. (Tough job) .

I'm not too sure that removing the preferences is the way to go or not. If you feel comfortable with it, go ahead . You could be removing preferences that will force you to reconfig settings systemwide. If it is a preference problem, see if you can nail it down to just 1. Or maybe 2.

There is another possibility . Just what you wanted to hear, right? Check your drive using the "Get Info" command and see how much disk space you have remaining. See if you have AT LEAST 1 Gig free. If you don't, this is definitely a beginning of a nightmare .

So I finally got around to fixing this. My solution involved taking the advice I had found in another thread- deleting all the plists from my user account. However, in case anyone else runs into this, I should note that I didn't have to delete ALL the preferences. I sorted my preferences folder by date modified, then deleted all the apple plists that had a modified date around or later than the time I noticed these problems arising. Thankfully this worked, because I did not feel like deleting preferences for ALL my programs, as I have quite a few, and since it seemed like a system wide problem, I figured it was in one of the apple plists anyway. (deleting individual plists for crashing programs didn't work, believe me I tried this first). I restarted for good measure and everything is back in working order. Thanks!

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